Third World Quarterly

ISSN: 0143-6597 (Print) 1360-2241 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctwq20

Food-security governance in India and Ethiopia: a

comparative analysis

Ivica Petrikova

To cite this article: Ivica Petrikova (2018): Food-security governance in India and Ethiopia: a
comparative analysis, Third World Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2018.1538734

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1538734

Published online: 26 Nov 2018.

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Third World Quarterly
https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1538734

Food-security governance in India and Ethiopia:

a comparative analysis
Ivica Petrikova
University of London, Egham, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Despite recently legislating the right of all citizens to food security, India Received 27 October 2017
continues to suffer high food-insecurity rates. With respect to several Accepted 16 October 2018
measures, food insecurity in India appears to be actually higher than in
Ethiopia, a country with only one-fourth of India’s average per-capita KEYWORDS
income. This article examines comparatively the two countries’ food- Food security
security challenges and governance mechanisms and identifies several India
relevant policy areas for mutual learning – dietary diversity, maternal Ethiopia
and infant nutrition, and sanitation as well as food production and pro- public distribution system
grammes’ external oversight. Beyond India and Ethiopia, these findings (PDS)
are pertinent also to other developing countries facing similar food- productive safety net
security challenges, such as Pakistan, Nigeria or Sudan. programme (PSNP)
nutrition

Introduction
In 2013, the Indian parliament passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA), which pro-
claimed to guarantee Indian citizens a justiciable right to food. Nevertheless, despite this
formal acknowledgment of citizens’ inalienable right to food and the country’s recent rapid
economic growth, a large proportion of Indians is still food insecure. For example, 36% of
Indian children younger than five years old are underweight.1 The comparative rate in
Ethiopia, a country with similar food-security challenges but only one-fourth of India’s aver-
age per-capita income, is significantly lower, at 24%.2 India’s inordinately high food-insecurity
level relative to the country’s income has been dubbed by some the ‘South Asian enigma’.3
By comparing the food-security situation and governance in India and Ethiopia, with a par-
ticular focus on food access and utilisation, this article contributes to research on the enigma’s
causes and remedies specifically and on food-security governance more broadly. It identifies
opportunities for the two countries’ mutual learning, particularly in the areas of dietary
diversity, maternal and infant nutrition, and sanitation. Whilst derived from the Indian and
Ethiopian contexts, these lessons may be relevant also for other food-insecure countries in
the Global South facing similar challenges, such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Sudan.
The article’s next sections define ‘food security’, describe its state in India and Ethiopia,
review the two countries’ key food-security policies and programmes, and finally reflect on
suitable cross-country lessons. The analysis draws on information from national surveys (eg

CONTACT Ivica Petrikova ivica.petrikova@rhul.ac.uk University of London, Egham, United Kingdom.

© 2018 Global South Ltd
2 IVICA PETRIKOVA

India’s National Family Health Survey [NFHS] and Ethiopia’s Demographic and Health Survey
[DHS]) and international databases (eg the Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], and the
World Development Indicators [WDI]), secondary sources including academic literature and
policy reports, and semi-structured interviews conducted in India and Ethiopia with govern-
ment officials and non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers between April and June 2017.

What is food security?

FAO defines food security as a state ‘when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and
economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and
food preferences for an active and healthy life’.4 Food security stands on four pillars: food
availability, access to food, food utilisation, and stability over time.
Food availability, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), denotes the amount
of food present in a country/area through domestic production, imports, food stocks, and
food aid.5 The term normally refers to the national or regional rather than the household
level.6 Access to food, in contrast, refers to households’ and individuals’ ability to obtain suf-
ficient food through legal and conventional means, which include producing, buying, and
receiving donations but exclude stealing and begging.7 Food utilisation relates to the body’s
physical process of digesting food and utilising it in further functioning. Its fulfilment is
affected by both the type of food consumed and the health of the body consuming it and
thus can be jeopardised by a lack of vital micronutrients, unhygienic conditions or poor
health. Finally, stability or reasonable future certainty about having access to enough food
in the future needs to be fulfilled as well to ensure lasting food security.8
This article focuses on food-access and food-utilisation aspects of food security, which
are most closely connected with household and individual food-security outcomes under-
lying the South Asian enigma. Food availability and stability, more related to national and
regional food-security measures, are discussed only vis-à-vis their effects on household and
individual food security.

Food (in)security in India and Ethiopia

This section describes the socio-economic context of the two countries under study, portrays
their respective food-security situations with reference to the four food-security pillars, and
briefly discusses the South Asian enigma.

Establishing context
India and Ethiopia constitute a suitable comparative case-study pair given their resemblance
in several key economic and social indicators (Table 1). Even though India’s gross domestic
product (GDP) per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity, is almost four times higher
than Ethiopia’s, both countries experienced high economic growth in the past two decades.
Their levels of economic inequality, measured by the Gini index, are almost identical as well:
just below 34.
 Third World Quarterly 3

Table 1. Basic economic and social indicators in 2016.

Ethiopia India
PPPpc (2014 USD) 1523 5730
GDP growth (%, 1997–2016) 7.9 7.0
Gini index 33.6 33.9
Population (mill) 99.3 1311.0
Population growth (%) 2.5 1.2
Rural population (% total) 80.5 67.3
Agriculture (% employed) 72.7 51.1
Staple grains Teff, wheat, white maize, sorghum Wheat, rice
Political regime authoritarian democratic
Source: World Development Indicators.

The two countries are also amongst the most populous on their respective continents.
India ranks second to China in total population in Asia (and the world), with 1.3 billion
inhabitants. Ethiopia, with just over 100 million people, is surpassed in Africa only by Nigeria,
and due to high population growth is estimated to attain more than 200 million by 2050.9
Additionally, the majority of the population in both countries is still rural (India 67%, Ethiopia
80%) and employed in agriculture (India 51%, Ethiopia 73%).
There are also some important differences between the two countries pertinent to the
comparison of food-security issues and governance. India’s staple grains are primarily wheat
and rice, both internationally relatively widely traded commodities, whilst Ethiopia’s include
less widely traded teff, barley, millet, sorghum and white maize. Regarding the countries’
political regime, India is considered the largest democracy in the world whereas Ethiopia
has been governed by a single party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF), since 1991 in a highly authoritarian manner.10

Access to food and food utilisation

As food access and utilisation constitute this study’s main focus, I present India’s and
Ethiopia’s performance in them first. The most commonly utilised measure of food access
is FAO’s ‘prevalence of undernourishment’, which expresses the probability that a randomly
selected individual from a given country consumes fewer daily calories than necessary
for an active and healthy life.11 It is estimated using a combination of national food-avail-
ability and economic-inequality data and has been accused of inaccuracy by numerous
researchers.12 Nevertheless, before considering alternative indicators, let us look at its
evolution in the two countries under study. Figure 1 demonstrates that whilst between
2000 and 2015 the prevalence of undernourishment in Ethiopia was roughly halved, in
India it remained more or less the same. However, at 28.2% Ethiopia’s rate is still twice as
high as India’s (14.5%).
Alternative measures of food access, which also capture the quality of food utilisation,
are undernourishment rates amongst children younger than five years old, available from
the World Health Organization (WHO). These measures are widely acknowledged as the best
indicators of populations’ nutritional status as they are derived directly from national health
surveys and closely correlated with undernourishment rates across populations overall.13
They include the prevalence of child stunting (too short for age), underweight (too light for
age), and wasting (too light for height).
 4 IVICA PETRIKOVA

In contrast with data on general undernourishment prevalence, which showed India

performing better than Ethiopia, child-undernourishment data (Figure 2) show the opposite.
India’s and Ethiopia’s stunting rates are almost identical (38.4% and 38%, respectively) but
‘only’ 24% of Ethiopian children are underweight and 9% wasted as opposed to India’s 36%
and 21%, respectively. Other relevant indicators, presented in Table 2, also point to somewhat
better food utilisation in Ethiopia, with lower prevalence of anaemia14 amongst pregnant
women (India 53.6%, Ethiopia 23%), lower prevalence of vitamin A deficiency in the popu-
lation (India 62%, Ethiopia 51%), and lower rate of open defecation (India 46%, Ethiopia
32%), which has been explicitly linked to better nourishment outcomes.15 Only access to
improved water sources is significantly higher amongst Indian (94%) than Ethiopian (64%)
households.

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Figure 1.  Comparison of undernourishment prevalence in Ethiopia and India. Data source:
FAOSTAT.

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Figure 2.  Comparison of children’s undernourishment rates in Ethiopia and India. Data source:
FAOSTAT.
 Third World Quarterly 5

Table 2.  Key food-utilisation indicators in 2015/2016.

Ethiopia India
Protein in diet (g/c/day) 61.0 59.0
Anaemia amongst pregnant women (%) 23.0 53.6
Anaemia amongst children <5 years old (%) 57.0 58.5
Vitamin A deficiency (%) 51.0 62.0
Access to improved water (%) 61.6 94.1
Open defecation practice (%) 32.0 46.0
Source: FAOSTAT.

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Figure 3.  Comparison of Ethiopia’s and India’s food-availability and food-stability indicators.
Data source: FAOSTAT.

Food availability and stability

Food availability is commonly measured through average dietary energy supply adequacy
(ADESA), calculated by converting the country’s total food supply into calories relative to
the country’s population needs based on lifestyle.16 Figure 3 shows that whilst India’s food
availability has been more than adequate (> 100%) since 1995, Ethiopia’s has approached
adequacy only in recent years. One reason why India’s food availability in the last quarter
century has been greater than Ethiopia’s is the higher level of India’s per-capita food pro-
duction. However, contributing to the rising ADESA, Ethiopia’s food production has also
experienced stable growth since mid-1990s (Figure 3). In line with these trends, India has
been a large net food exporter since 1995 whilst Ethiopia has maintained in this timeframe
a largely neutral food-trade balance. India’s food stock has, however, exhibited more fluctu-
ation than Ethiopia’s, with its per-capita food-supply variability, a measure of food stability,
more volatile than Ethiopia’s during the past two decades.
The various statistics presented show that although India’s food availability has been
clearly higher in the past quarter century than Ethiopia’s, the country’s national food abun-
dance has failed to translate into satisfactory food security for all.17 In fact, despite
 6 IVICA PETRIKOVA

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Figure 4.  Comparison of child-weaning trends in Ethiopia and India. Data source: http://rchiips.
org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf, https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.

significantly lower per-capita incomes and food availability, the Ethiopian population appears
more food-secure than the Indian population regarding several food-access and food-util-
isation measures. Is this a manifestation of the aforementioned South Asian enigma or merely
of a fundamental genetic difference between the two populations?

South Asian enigma?

The term ‘South Asian enigma’ was coined in 1997 in order to highlight that significantly
higher per-capita incomes in South Asian countries were associated with worse food-security
outcomes, particularly child undernourishment rates, than in sub-Saharan Africa.18 However,
some researchers countered that the higher South Asian undernourishment rates were
driven by genetic differences between people of South Asian and other ethnic origins, point-
ing, for example, to findings that South Asians are at a higher risk of diabetes at lower body
mass index values than other ethnic groups.19
The debate has not been settled to date; nevertheless, several pieces of evidence suggest
that India’s persistently high food insecurity has deeper causes than merely a genetic one. First,
studies have repeatedly shown affluent Indian children to follow statistically indistinguishable
growth patterns from well-nourished children elsewhere in the world, at least until adoles-
cence.20 Second, in the last two decades Bangladesh, whose population is ethnically akin to
the Indian one, has unlike India experienced a rapid reduction in child undernourishment rates
and food insecurity in general.21 Third, even if Indian child-undernourishment figures were
slightly inflated due to some innate genetic differences, India has experienced a more sluggish
rate of food-insecurity reduction than many African countries, Ethiopia included.
Comparing Ethiopia’s food-security issues and governance with India’s can thus likely
shed light on some of the causes underlying India’s high food-insecurity prevalence and
potential remedies. Nonetheless, given Ethiopia’s own food-security challenges, useful
cross-country lessons can likely be drawn also in the other direction.

Food-security programmes in India and Ethiopia and their performance

This section reviews the two countries’ programmes and policies aimed at addressing house-
hold and individual food-security outcomes, and evaluates their relative performance.
 Third World Quarterly 7

Main Indian food-security programmes

India’s chief national food-security programme is the Public Distribution System (PDS). It is
supported mainly by the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Mid-Day
Meal Scheme (MDMS).
PDS was established in India after World War II, with the explicit aim to boost domestic
agricultural production and bolster food security. Originally a universal government subsidy
scheme for cereals, purchased from domestic farmers at guaranteed prices, in 1997 under
pressure from the World Bank it was turned into a targeted pro-poor subsidy mechanism.22
Afterwards, it granted only people certified as living below the poverty line (BPL) the oppor-
tunity to purchase subsidised cereals, mostly wheat and rice (10 kg per household per
month). An additional scheme, the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), enabled the 25 million
poorest people in India to purchase up to 35 kg23 of subsidised grains per month. Individual
Indian states were, however, permitted to make their PDS schemes more inclusive at their
own cost, which resulted in more comprehensive programmes operating in states such as
Chattisgarh, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.24 In 2013, the NFSA expanded the theoretical
PDS coverage to the poorest 75% of rural and 50% of urban citizens and allowed eligible
households to buy up to 5 kg of cereals per person per month at even lower prices than
before (rice 3 Indian rupees [IRS]/kg, wheat 2 IRS/kg, coarse grains 1 IRS/kg).25 By the end of
2016, all Indian states had formally begun implementing the NFSA.26
ICDS, established in 1975, aims to supplement PDS in improving children’s food security
by encouraging correct nutritional, feeding, hygiene and health practices.27 Interventions
within the scheme include the provision of supplementary nutrition and basic health services
to children under six years old and to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, of nutritional
and health education to mothers, and of growth-monitoring, de-worming and preschool
education to children. These services are delivered through a network of anganwadi centres
(AWCs), staffed by government workers either providing help directly (eg preschool educa-
tion, nutritional supplementation) or liaising with other health workers (eg immunisations,
health checks). The NFSA entrusted ICDS to provide pregnant women with maternity grants
of 6,000 IRS.28
MDMS, implemented in all Indian states from 2001, is also intended to promote child
nutrition, specifically through primary schools.29 As specified by the NFSA, all students in
public primary schools up to the age of 14 are entitled to receive a cooked lunch (450 kcal
and 12 grams of protein lower primary, 700 kcal and 20 grams of protein upper primary).30

Main Ethiopian food-security programmes

Ethiopia’s key national food-security scheme is the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP).
It was established by the Ethiopian Government and a donors’ consortium led by the World
Bank after the drought of 2002/2003. Motivation for the programme came from the Ethiopian
government’s desire to break the cycle of Ethiopia’s emergency appeals for food aid, which
saved people’s lives but often led to asset loss. The original PSNP provided food and/or cash
transfers to food-insecure households in chronically food-insecure woredas (districts), iden-
tified based on food-aid receipts in the past, in return for participation in public works. It
was complemented by the Other Food Security Programme (OFSP), which provided pro-
ductive-asset packages to households and invested in socio-economic infrastructure.31
8 IVICA PETRIKOVA

In PSNP’s third round (2010–2015), the programme’s coverage was extended and improve-
ments were made to the timely delivery of transfers and the quality of the public works
implemented. OFSP was renamed the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP) and
expanded to help households acquire assets through the provision of technical assistance,
credit, and help with business planning. Following impact evaluations by the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the fourth phase of PSNP, currently underway (2015–
2020), further enlarged the programme’s scope.
It currently covers seven out of nine Ethiopia’s regions, benefitting up to 10 million rural
and one million urban Ethiopians.32 Participant households with economically active mem-
bers are entitled to 15 kg of cereals and 4 kg of pulses or their cash equivalent (cash disburse-
ment is preferred by the government and gradually increasing) per person per month for
six months a year. In return, active household members must contribute up to five days of
public work per month. The public works generally focus on community development, such
as soil and water conservation, rangeland management, and construction of community
assets including roads, irrigation canals, and schools.33 Household members unable to work
(children, elderly, disabled, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers) receive PSNP food/cash
support all year without contributing to the public works. The programme in its current
format has also incorporated the HABP and thus offers technical assistance (eg agricultural
extension to farmers), training in livelihood activities, and credit to enable households to
increase and diversify their sources of income and acquire assets. Additionally, PSNP IV con-
tains a strengthened nutritional element, which provides nutritional education to partici-
pants as part of the public works.
Similar to India, since 2005 Ethiopia has also operated a school-feeding programme that
provides hot lunch to primary-school students, specified to contain 150 grams of food pre-
pared from grains or beans.34

Comparing food-access and food-utilisation governance

A detailed analysis of the two countries’ food-security challenges and governance approaches
has helped identify three main areas for mutual food-access and food-utilisation learning:
dietary diversity and micronutrient intake, maternal and infant nutrition, and sanitation. The
WHO data presented earlier showed that both countries still suffer from high rates of child
undernourishment, with India more affected than Ethiopia. This may be partly due to house-
holds lacking access to sufficient calories, particularly in Ethiopia where the population’s
prevalence of undernourishment is twice as high as in India.
The countries’ main food-security programmes – India’s PDS and Ethiopia’s PSNP – were
set up chiefly to address this issue (food access)35 and both have been at least partially
successful. PDS has been found to have a small positive impact on recipients’ caloric intake.36
The effects estimated are larger in studies conducted after 2009, when PDS was expanded
in several Indian states and became better targeted – reducing national grain-diversion rates
from 54% in 2003–2005 to 44% in 2014–2015.37 Preliminary evidence on the impact of the
recently enacted NFSA suggests both a further reduction in PDS diversion rates and signif-
icant expansion of coverage, from 15% to 74% of the population.38 It is thus reasonable to
expect that PDS may further boost the Indian population’s food access in the near future,
even if – given the limit of 5 kg of grain-purchase per person per month – only modestly.
One worrisome issue in this otherwise mostly positive trend is the increasing tying of PDS
 Third World Quarterly 9

benefits to people’s biometric identification numbers (aadhaar), which has exacerbated

exclusion rates amongst the most vulnerable.39 On the other hand, the NFSA has legally
turned PDS from a mechanism for welfare provision into a guarantor of people’s justiciable
right to food, which has become reflected to some extent in PDS beneficiaries’ perception
of the programme.40
Ethiopia’s PSNP has also been found to improve beneficiaries’ food access, by reducing
households’ annual number of food-insufficient months by 1.05 (1.53 amongst households
receiving also productive services).41 PSNP’s food allowance (or its cash equivalent) is larger
in amount than PDS’s, granting beneficiaries 15 kg of cereals and 4 kg of pulses per person
per month, and unlike PDS, PSNP is relatively well targeted, particularly in Ethiopia’s highland
areas.42 However, it presently covers only 10% of Ethiopians, and even though it has been
found to have had significant positive income effects on non-recipients as well, through
spillovers,43 due to its small coverage compared to PDS it is unlikely to have a larger positive
effect on food access nationally.

Dietary diversity and micronutrient deficiency

Nevertheless, India’s high child-undernourishment rates are increasingly seen as a matter
of faulty food utilisation rather than deficient food access.44 One key cause is the population’s
generally unbalanced cereal-heavy diet low in micronutrients, as suggested also by the high
prevalence of anaemia and Vitamin A deficiency (Table 2). PDS, focused on selling cheap
wheat and rice, increased, according to some studies, consumption of the subsidised cereals
but had either no effect on dietary diversity45 (the variety of food groups consumed) or
actually reduced the consumption of nutritionally superior coarse cereals.46 That may be
one of the reasons why PDS has failed to lower children’s underweight rates amongst par-
ticipating households.47 ICDS and MDMS have been more successful in improving recipient
children’s daily nutrient intake and anthropometric outcomes,48 but both programmes have
suffered from poor coverage and corruption49 and their national-level impact has hence
been limited.
Albeit lower than India’s, nutritional deficiencies in Ethiopia are also high. Results vis-à-vis
PSNP’s nutritional effects are inconclusive – one study50 found children in recipient house-
holds to have improved height-for-age scores but IFPRI-led impact evaluation discovered
no significant effect on children’s anthropometric scores or dietary diversity.51 However,
PSNP transfers of cash as opposed to food have been associated with a significantly higher
consumption of oils and vitamin-A-rich foods.52 There is a danger when transferring cash
rather than food of exposing the vulnerable to negative effects of inflation, as experienced
by some PSNP cash recipients during the 2008 food-price spikes.53 Consequently, the majority
of PSNP households prefer not to receive only cash.54 Nonetheless, a combination of food
and cash receipts may in view of the evidence be more beneficial to increasing the diversity
of food-group and micronutrient intake than solely cereal transfers, as done by PDS.
India’s higher child undernourishment and micronutrient-deficiency rates than Ethiopia’s
could be related to differences in the countries’ staple diets. Whilst both Indian and Ethiopian
staples include cereals, legumes and onions, the staple grain in most parts of Ethiopia – teff –
has higher iron content55 than both wheat and rice, Indian staple grains, although not by as
much as was thought previously. PSNP’s inclusion of pulses, also rich in iron as well as in
protein, likely contributes to a more balanced diet amongst PSNP food recipients as well,
10 IVICA PETRIKOVA

however. The need to improve Indian diets has been increasingly acknowledged also by the
Indian government, with various policy strategies – ranging from micronutrient-fortification
of PDS cereals through diversification of PDS-sold foods to promoting consumption of nutri-
tionally superior coarse cereals – currently being debated.56

Maternal and infant nutrition

For children’s as well as adults’ good nutritional outcomes, the most crucial are the first 1000
days of life, from conception through the time in the womb to the second birthday.57 There
are two aspects of the countries’ relevant policies worth discussing here. The first relates to
pregnancy. Table 2 showed that more than 50% of pregnant Indian women are anaemic, as
compared to 23% of pregnant Ethiopian women. Studies have also reported many pregnant
Indian women suffering heavy workloads and reducing food intake in hopes of an easier
delivery. All these issues may compromise foetal nourishment.58 In order to ease the burden
of India’s pregnant women, the NFSA decreed that they should receive a stipend of 6,000 IRS.
This recommendation was implemented in 2017 under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana
Yojana policy; however, it reduced the amount awarded to 5,000 IRS and is only given for the
first live-born child, excluding 57% of annual births.59 Even when the money is received, the
bulk of it is often used to cover the costs of hospital delivery.60 In contrast, Ethiopian PSNP
provides direct cash or food support (without the need to participate in public works) to women
from the fourth month of pregnancy until the child completes the first year of life.61 Evaluations
concluded that PSNP’s pregnancy-support component is relatively well-implemented.62
Despite higher rates of anaemia amongst Indian than Ethiopian pregnant women, the
percentage of ‘very small’ Indian babies (18.2%)63 is only slightly higher than that of Ethiopian
ones (16%).64 Nevertheless, this small difference in underweight rates becomes larger as the
babies grow (Figure 2). One reason may be the difference in the two countries’ weaning
trends. Figure 4 reveals that contrary to the recommendation to start feeding babies (semi)
solids after they reach six months of age,65 52% of mothers of 6–8-month-old and almost
30% of mothers of 9–11-month-old babies in India feed their children only liquids. The
comparative proportions in Ethiopia, although still high, are significantly lower: 39% and 16%.
In order to improve child-feeding practices – and in response to IFPRI’s finding that PSNP
III had no impact on children’s nutritional outcomes – PSNP IV enlarged the programme’s
nutritional component, with pregnant and lactating PSNP recipients now expected to attend
nutritional classes (eg community health talks, cooking demonstrations). For other PSNP
beneficiaries, attendance of these classes counts towards their public-work allotment and,
in an effort to transform traditional gender roles, male attendance is encouraged.66 Impact
evaluation of a pilot nutritional intervention in Eastern Ethiopia found a significant positive
impact on child-feeding practices.67 India has provided health and nutritional education to
pregnant women and mothers of young children through ICDS for decades; however, this
programme component has been less utilised than ICDS’s provision of food rations, partic-
ularly in poorer states (eg only 13–17% of eligible women received such education in Uttar
Pradesh and 16–18% in Rajasthan),68 and has generally been seen as ineffective.69

Sanitation
In addition to unbalanced diets, children’s undernourishment rates across the world have
been increasingly linked to sanitation issues.70 For example, inter-district differences in
 Third World Quarterly 11

open-defecation rates in India were found to explain up to 55% of variation in their child-un-
dernourishment rates.71 India has implemented a series of nationwide programmes to erad-
icate the practice, the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) mission being the most recent one, but
they have not been widely successful, managing to reduce open-defecation rates only from
70% to 46% between 1990 and 2015.72 The reduction in Ethiopia in the same time frame has
been considerably greater, from 90% to 32%.73 The suspected rationale for Ethiopia’s greater
success in this regard has been treatment of the issue as a public-health problem and focus-
ing primarily on the provision of hygiene and sanitation education to people, urging them
to build their own toilets. In contrast, successive Indian governments built millions of toilets;
however, without sufficient community engagement and education, and also for cultural
reasons related to the caste system, Indians have been reluctant to use them.74 The ongoing
Swachh Bharat campaign that aims to eradicate open defecation in India by October 2019 –
Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday – appears to suffer from similar problems as previous ones,
as it has under time pressure resorted to using coercive methods without persuading com-
munities that using toilets is healthier than defecating in the open, and may have thus
aroused resentment against the externally imposed toilets.75

Comparing food-availability and food-stability governance

Turning to a brief comparison of India’s and Ethiopia’s food-availability and food-stability
governance, particularly vis-à-vis its effect on individual and household food-security out-
comes, both countries’ national food policies were shaped by their experience of famines.
In response to the 1943 Bengali famine, followed by three decades of food shortages, India
began pursuing a policy of national grain self-sufficiency.76 It achieved this goal by the mid-
1990s, thanks to the widespread adoption of ‘Green-Revolution’ higher yielding crops, agri-
cultural subsidies (for fertiliser, electricity for irrigation etc.), and PDS’s guarantee of minimum
support prices to farmers.77 Although in theory PDS could have contributed to households’
better food-security outcomes through this procurement arm as well, by boosting small
farmers’ incomes, due to high land concentration, unsuccessful land reforms78 and grain
purchases predominantly from large farmers in Punjab and Haryana, the programme
strengthened Indian rural agricultural elites instead.79
The increased food production allowed India to amass large stores of grain as well as
become a major international exporter of rice, wheat and buffalo.80 However, in line with
the ‘India first’ national food policy, these exports have been periodically restricted during
international price spikes.81 Whilst export restrictions may have helped keep domestic grain
prices lower in the short run, in addition to impairing food security in net-importing countries
by increasing international prices82 they reduced domestic market integration83 and may
have undermined domestic food production in the longer term.84 Furthermore, much of the
food stored is annually wasted or pilfered – an estimated 1.1 million tonnes of cereals
between 2010 and 201385 – and despite the 2010 Supreme Court decree for excess grain to
be given away for free, state governments routinely ignore the request.86 The storage system
has not addressed food instability well either as in years with high food-price inflation it
failed to release enough grains to meaningfully reduce prices.87
Ethiopia changed its food-policy strategy in early 2000s, also in an effort to break the
cycle of recurrent food crises and reliance on foreign food aid, which constituted for the
country a source of ‘national humiliation and shame’.88 It succeeded in increasing national
12 IVICA PETRIKOVA

food production (see Figure 3) over the past two decades thanks to a successful land-certi-
fication and tenure reform,89 growing adoption of modern seed varieties, and farmer-support
policies including fertiliser subsidies and agricultural extension services.90 It has not engaged
in intensive international food trade like India thus far, both due to its significantly lower
domestic food production relative to domestic demand and its staple crops’ (teff, sorghum,
etc.) ‘thin’ international markets, although its exports of white maize to neighbouring coun-
tries are rising.91 Wider adoption of modern seed varieties and of irrigation and fertiliser use
will likely help increase food production further.92 However, in India these trends have had
numerous negative effects on agricultural soils, including increase in erosion, waterlogging
and salinity, as well as on groundwater tables, which have become in many places almost
depleted.93 Ethiopia would thus do well to be more environmentally aware in its efforts to
augment food production.
There are indications that Ethiopia’s small farmers have thus far benefited from the coun-
try’s agricultural-intensification policies more than India’s – the tenure reform has been
explicitly linked with food-security improvements94 and much of the PSNP food rations are
annually purchased from small farmers (and their cooperatives), which in Ethiopia is esti-
mated to be cheaper than buying from large producers.95 In addition, the operation of
Ethiopia’s government agency tasked with food-price stabilisation, unlike India’s, has been
deemed quite successful.96 Nevertheless, unlike India’s food-based PDS, PSNP has from the
beginning been intended as a ‘cash-first programme’, and even though it still distributes
food as well, its increasing shift towards cash could, without appropriate safeguards, disin-
centivise Ethiopia’s domestic food production and by extension harm some small farmers’
livelihoods.97 What indisputably has such a disincentive effect already, acknowledged also
by the Development Assistance Committee,98 is that one-third of current PSNP food transfers
is shipped from the United States in kind.99

Cross-country lessons
The brief comparison of India’s and Ethiopia’s key food-security challenges and their ways
of addressing them has highlighted several possible areas for mutual policy lessons. The first
one relates to the decision whether to award food-security support in food or cash, with
India’s main food-security programme, PDS, still disbursing only food and Ethiopia’s PSNP
aiming to switch fully to cash. The two countries’ experience suggests that transferring a
mixture of both may be the most effective option, as cash provisions might jeopardise house-
holds’ food security during food-price hikes100 but simultaneously improve households’
dietary diversity more than food transfers.101 That most PSNP beneficiaries prefer to receive
a mixture of food and cash102 supports this mixed-transfer proposition.
Maintaining the mixed character (food and cash) of PSNP transfers would also align with
Ethiopia’s ongoing effort to increase domestic food production, an area where India has thus
far outperformed Ethiopia. An integral part of this endeavour should be persuading the US
to cease its in-kind development aid to Ethiopia, as it has done vis-à-vis other countries,
including India, and for which Ethiopia – as demonstrated in donor negotiations regarding
other matters – possesses sufficient political capital.103 However, in order to maximise the
positive effects of national food production on household food security in both countries,
PSNP should continue and PDS should augment the purchase of state food transfers from
small farmers. PDS’s announced move away from selling mostly wheat and rice in favour of
 Third World Quarterly 13

millet (a coarse cereal), which requires less irrigation and hence can be grown cheaply also
by small farmers, may thus be a step in the right direction for India.104 Rising white-maize
exports by Ethiopian smallholder cooperatives demonstrate that encouraging smallholders’
food production does not necessarily equate to lowering countries’ ability to engage in
international food trade either.105 What could harm this ability for both countries, however,
would be continued export-restriction of crops experiencing rising international prices,
which not only impairs food security in crop-importing countries but also reduces future
trade opportunities and crop production in the restriction-imposing countries.106
Another crucial area for improving food-security outcomes in both countries is sanitation.
Ethiopia has been praised internationally for rapidly reducing open-defecation rates in recent
decades; however, high rates have thus far persisted in lowland regions (Somali, Afar) and many
newly built toilets are unimproved latrines less effective in reducing bacterial infections – and
thus improving food security – than improved latrines.107 New latrines have also sprung up in
their millions across India in the last couple of years, as part of a campaign to eradicate open
defecation by October 2019 that the government has declared a great success. Nevertheless,
not only may some of the new latrines not be fully effective at reducing bacterial diseases, many
new owners refuse to use them.108 Coffey and Spears argue that one of the key reasons is India’s
caste system, which has traditionally reserved sanitation work for the lowest ‘untouchable’ caste.
Many people from other castes are consequently unwilling to clean or empty latrines and
pre-emptively do not use them.109 Extensive work with Indian (as well as lowland Ethiopian)
communities to realise the health dangers of open defecation is seen as the most effective
potential remedy but has largely been ignored even by the latest Indian sanitation campaign,
which in 2015–2016 allocated to community work only 1% of the total budget.110
Yet another important area for action concerns the nutrition of, particularly, pregnant
women and young children. Fewer pregnant women in Ethiopia are anaemic than in India
and Ethiopia has also experienced a faster rate of improvement in this regard. The immediate
cause of this discrepancy could lie in better nutrition and sanitation of Ethiopian women
but these elements would likely improve for pregnant Indian women if they received greater
support from the government. Pregnant PSNP beneficiaries in Ethiopia are entitled to uncon-
ditional cash/food transfers from their fourth month of pregnancy until the child’s first birth-
day. Meanwhile, only Indian women pregnant with their first child are entitled to any financial
support and the amount has been reported to be mostly spent on payments to doctors/
nurses at delivery. Whilst cultural elements may also be at play here,111 the lack of public
financial support leaves millions of poor Indian women with no choice but to work through-
out pregnancy and right after delivery, compromising the nutritional status of their new-
borns. To help address this issue, the Indian government should at least consider providing
the maternity benefit to all pregnant women, as recommended by the NFSA.
The nutrition of many Indian and Ethiopian infants is further imperilled through inadequate
feeding practices. Whilst breastfeeding rates are high in both countries (94%+ breastfeeding
rates of 6–8-month-olds), a large proportion of 6–23-month-old children particularly in India
receives no (semi)solid foods despite the inability of milk112 to fully meet their nutritional needs.
Once weaned, only 7% of Ethiopian and 9% of Indian children consume a WHO-defined ‘min-
imum acceptable diet’.113 These issues should be addressed through a combination of better
nutritional awareness and easier access to food groups other than cereals. Both countries could
consider including vegetables and fruits in PDS/PSNP rations, and India also pulses, as Ethiopia
started in the latest version of PSNP and with which some states in India (eg Chhattisgarh)
14 IVICA PETRIKOVA

have already had some success.114 Nutritional education, recently strengthened in Ethiopia’s
PSNP, should be improved in India as well, possibly by regulating the employment status of
AWC workers currently charged with the task but severely underpaid.115
Several other potential food-security lessons between the two countries are constrained
by their distinct political-economic situations, only alluded to thus far. Whilst the depiction
of PDS in India’s NFSA as a guarantor of ‘rights’ rather than handouts has emboldened some
Indians to appeal when denied PDS coverage or service,116 Ethiopia in 2013 cracked down
on the use of the word ‘rights’ by NGOs.117 It would thus be unrealistic to recommend that
Ethiopia adopts rights-based language regarding food security, however beneficial that
could be. Similarly, PSNP’s success in targeting and its relative lack of corruption (as well as
Ethiopia’s successful prevention of famine following the 2015–2016 drought) have been
attributed to the strong pro-food-security will of the EPRDF-led authoritarian Ethiopian gov-
ernment.118 Even if India’s national government matched such will, however, India’s (more)
democratic governance process is by default more protracted and more open to transfor-
mation by other national actors than Ethiopia’s.
Finally, because Ethiopia, unlike India, obtains most funds for its food-security pro-
grammes from foreign development agencies and its national income is significantly lower
than India’s, recommending that Ethiopia significantly expand PSNP’s coverage as India has
recently done with PDS may not be realistic either (at least presently), even if it could sub-
stantially help further reduce Ethiopia’s food insecurity. Thanks to PSNP’s largely foreign
funding, Ethiopia has been additionally obliged to allow foreign donors close oversight of
and feedback on PSNP’s functioning. Nonetheless, both Ethiopian and international contacts
interviewed for this article opined that the joint government–donor discussions of PSNP
and inbuilt impact evaluations of its different initiatives were actually beneficial, ensuring
that the programme learned from its mistakes and continuously improved.119 Good-quality
evaluations of India’s key food-security programmes are abundant as well (albeit less sys-
tematic than Ethiopia’s) but India’s food-security governance would undoubtedly improve
if the link between their findings and the policies enacted were also strengthened.

Conclusion
Inspired by India’s and Ethiopia’s similar food-security issues along with the reality that
despite significantly higher per-capita incomes India has performed worse in some food-se-
curity measures (eg child underweight and wasting rates) than Ethiopia, this article has
compared the two countries’ approaches to food-security governance and identified several
key areas for potential cross-country learning, including dietary diversity, sanitation, and
maternal and infant nutrition, as well as food production and programmes’ external over-
sight.120 Whilst naturally most applicable to the Indian and Ethiopian contexts, these findings
are also useful beyond, as many countries in the Global South continue to struggle with
similar food-security challenges.

Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my warmest gratitude to the editors and peer reviewers at Third World Quarterly
for their comments on this article throughout the review process. The research presented in the article
was financially supported by Royal Holloway’s Research Strategy Fund.
 Third World Quarterly 15

Notes on contributor
Ivica Petrikova is a lecturer in international relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her
current research focuses on food-security challenges and governance mechanisms in emerging
economies. She also examines other development issues including social exclusion, social capital and
inequality as well as the relationship between religion and development. Her articles have been pub-
lished in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of International Development; Development in
Practice; Conflict, Security, and Development; and International Political Science Review.

Notes
1. http://rchiips.org/nfhs/factsheet_NFHS-4.shtml
2. https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf
3. Ramalingaswami, Jonsson, and Rohde, “Malnutrition: A South Asian Enigma.” The term is dis-
puted, as discussed later in the article.
4. http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4671e/y4671e06.htm
5. World Food Program (WFP), Emergency Food Security Assessment Handbook, 23.
6. Riely et al., Food Security Indicators.
7. WFP, Emergency Food Security Assessment Handbook, 23.
8. Petrikova, Global Food Security, 7–10.
9. http://www.ifs.du.edu/ifs/frm_CountryProfile.aspx?Country=ET
10. Feyissa, “Aid Negotiation”, 790.
11. http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/#.WYLMkceGPDc
12. eg Svedberg, Poverty and Undernutrition.
13. http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/#.WYLMkceGPDc
14. Usually caused by iron-poor diet and linked to higher morbidity and mortality.
15. eg Spears, Ghosh, and Cumming, “Open Defecation and Childhood Stunting.”
16. http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess-fadata/en/#.WYLMkceGPDc
17. Simultaneously, even dramatic reductions in national or regional food availability do not have
to trigger famines; Ravallion, “Famines and Economics.” Devereux, “Social Protection for
Enhanced Food Security,” demonstrates how drought-driven reductions in food stocks in
Ethiopia led to famines in 1984 and 2001 but not in 2015–2016, when the government’s timely
intervention (along with PSNP infrastructure in place) helped avoid famine.
18. Ramalingaswami, Jonsson, and Rohde, “Malnutrition: A South Asian Enigma.”
19. World Health Organization (WHO), “Appropriate Body Mass Index for Asian Populations.” See
also Yajnik et  al., “Neonatal Anthropometry”; and Hruschka and Hadley, “Universal
Anthropometric Standards Bias.”
20. Agarwal et al., Growth Performance of Affluent Indian Children; Bhandari et  al., “Growth
Performance of Affluent Indian Children.” Nubé, “Asian Enigma,” showed black children to suffer
from significantly higher undernourishment rates than Indian children in South Africa.
21. Headey et al., “The Other Asian Enigma.”
22. Mooij, “Food Policy and Politics.”
23. In order to prove one’s status as BPL or AAY, Indians need to obtain a relevant PDS ration card.
24. http://dfpd.nic.in/
25. National Food Security Act, India, 2013, http://indiacode.nic.in/acts-in-pdf/202013.pdf
26. Puri, Early Experiences, 10.
27. Lokshin et al., “Improving Child Nutrition?”
28. http://dfpd.nic.in/nfsa-act.htm
29. Singh, Park, and Dercon, “School Meals as a Safety Net.”
30. http://dfpd.nic.in/nfsa-act.htm
31. Berhane et al., Evaluation of Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.
32. Ministry of Agriculture (Ethiopia), Productive Safety Net Programme IV. All regions except for
Benishangul-Gumuz and Gambela, where the government operates separate food-security
programmes, are covered.
16 IVICA PETRIKOVA

33. Ibid., 21.

34. Zenebe et al., “School Feeding Program.”
35. Mooij, “Food Policy and Politics”; Berhane et al., Evaluation of Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.
36. Narayanan and Gerber, “Social Safety Nets”, 70.
37. Khera, “Trends in Diversion of Grain,” 108–9.
38. Puri, Early Experiences.
39. eg Drèze et al., “Aadhaar and Food Security.”
40. Pillay, “Revisiting the Indian Experience.”
41. Berhane et al., “Can Social Protection Work in Africa?”
42. Berhane et al., Evaluation of Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.
43. Filipski et al., General Equilibrium Impact Assessment.
44. Desai and Vanneman, “Enhancing Nutrition Security.”
45. Ibid.
46. Khera, “India’s Public Distribution System.”
47. Desai and Vanneman, “Enhancing Nutrition Security.”
48. Ibid.; Afridi, “Child Welfare Programs.”
49. Awofeso and Rammohan, “Three Decades”; Sharma, “Mid-Day Meal Scheme.”
50. Porter and Goyal, “Social Protection for All Ages?”
51. Berhane et al., The PSNP in Ethiopia.
52. Baye, Retta, and Abuye, “Effects of Conditional Food and Cash Transfers.” Also higher, though
not significantly, consumption of dairy, legumes, and other vegetables.
53. Devereux, “Social Protection for Enhanced Food Security.”
54. Baye, Retta, and Abuye, “Effects of Conditional Food and Cash Transfers.”
55. Baye, Teff: Nutrient Composition, 4–5. A key factor in anaemia is iron deficiency.
56. Pingali, Mittra, and Rahman, “From Food to Nutrition Security.”
57. https://www.unicef.org/southafrica/SAF_brief_1000days.pdf
58. Nubé, “Asian Enigma,” 513.
59. https://thewire.in/government/2-6-crore-live-births-a-year-and-modis-maternity-scheme-
reached-less-than-a-lakh-women-in-2017
60. Sinha et al., “Realising Universal Maternity Entitlements.”
61. Ministry of Agriculture (Ethiopia), Productive Safety Net Programme IV.
62. h t t p : / / s i t e re s o u rc e s. wo r l d b a n k . o rg / S A F E T YN E T S A N DT R A N S F E R S / R e s o u rc e s /
EthiopiaPSNPLessonsLearnedLite.pdf
63. In India, ‘very small’ babies refers to those weighing below 2.5 kg; in Ethiopia this is a subjective
reference as only 14% of babies were weighed after birth.
64. http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf; https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/
FR328.pdf
65. https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf, 192.
66. https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/un-new-york/42354/pnsp-4-overview-nutrition-
sensitive-interventions_en
67. Kang et al., “Effects of a Community-Based Nutrition Promotion.”
68. http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf
69. Pingali, Mittra, and Rahman, “From Food to Nutrition Security,” 79.
70. Spears, International Variation in Child Height.
71. Spears, Ghosh, and Cumming, “Open Defecation and Childhood Stunting.”
72. http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/ethiopia-pushes-hygiene-57463
73. Ibid.
74. Coffey and Spears, Where India Goes.
75. http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/ials/2018/may/05/a-blot-on-swachh-
bharat-1810394.html
76. http://oii.igidr.ac.in:8080/jspui/bitstream/2275/179/1/PP-056.pdf
77. Frankel, India’s Green Revolution.
78. Jha, Land Reforms in India.
 Third World Quarterly 17

79. Pingali, Mittra, and Rahman, “From Food to Nutrition Security,” 77.
80. https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/india-s-agricultural-exports-climb-record-high
81. Baylis, Jolejole-Foreman, and Mallory, Effects of Export Restrictions.
82. https://www.ictsd.org/sites/default/files/research/Agricultural%20Export%20Restrictions,
%20Food%20Security%20and%20the%20WTO.pdf
83. Baylis, Jolejole-Foreman, and Mallory, Effects of Export Restrictions.
84. Clarkson and Kulkarni, Effects of India’s Trade Policy; Fellmann, Hélaine, and Nekhay, “Harvest
Failures, Temporary Export Restrictions.”
85. https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/rice-wheat-worth-rs-2-050-crore-wasted-in-3-
yrs-in-govt-godowns/story-knsmp10kbAGSnWfpXUI7yI.html
86. http://www.businessinsider.com/india-malnutrition-a-story-of-rotting-crops-and-rotten-bu-
reaucracy-2012-7?IR=T
87. Basu, “India’s Foodgrain Policy.” Baylis, Jolejole-Foreman, and Mallory, Effects of Export
Restrictions, found export restrictions to further exacerbate food instability.
88. Lavers, Social Protection, 6.
89. https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2478729/CLTS_WP2_2013.pdf?
sequence=1
90. Spielman et al., “Cereal Intensification in Ethiopia.”
91. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ivc/Ethiopia_P4P_case_study.pdf
92. http://www.danangtimes.vn/Portals/0/Docs/210145221-Brief_KOtsuka%20_rev_.pdf
93. Bhattacharya et al., “Soil Degradation in India.”
94. https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2478729/CLTS_WP2_2013.pdf?
sequence=1
95. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ivc/Ethiopia_P4P_case_study.pdf, vii.
96. https://www.iatp.org/files/2012_07_13_IATP_GrainReservesReader.pdf#page=51
97. Ibid.
98. Interview in Addis Ababa.
99. https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/food-assistance. The bulk of US ‘development aid’ to Ethiopia
is provided in the form of (American) food.
00.
1 Devereux, “Social Protection for Enhanced Food Security.”
101. Baye, Retta, and Abuye, “Effects of Conditional Food and Cash Transfers.”
102. Ibid.
103. Feyissa, “Aid Negotiation.”
104. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/govt-to-distribute-millets-like-
bajra-via-pds/articleshow/63786531.cms; millet is also nutritionally superior to wheat and rice.
05.
1 http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ivc/Ethiopia_P4P_case_study.pdf
106. Woldie and Siddig, Impact of Banning Export.
107. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/ethiopia-pushes-hygiene-57463
108. https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/toilets-are-being-constructed-at-
a-remarkable-pace-but-its-not-a-prem-katha-yet-for-all-sections-of-the-population/ See also
Petrikova and Hudson, “Which Aid Initiatives Strengthen Food Security.”
09.
1 Coffey and Spears, Where India Goes.
110. Ibid., 221.
111. Ramalingaswami, Jonsson, and Rohde, “Malnutrition: A South Asian Enigma,” argue that preg-
nant women in South Asia are less cared for by their families than those in sub-Saharan Africa.
12.
1 Possibly supplemented with water, juice, and/or broth.
113. http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS-4Reports/India.pdf; https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/
FR328.pdf
14.
1 Pingali, Mittra, and Rahman, “From Food to Nutrition Security,” 80.
115. eg https://thewire.in/government/lack-basic-facilities-underpaid-overworked-workers-plague-
rajasthans-anganwadis
16.
1 Interview in Delhi.
117. Berhane et al., Evaluation of Ethiopia’s Food Security Program.
18 IVICA PETRIKOVA

18. Lavers, Social Protection.

1
119. Interviews in Addis Ababa. See also Berhane et al., The PSNP in Ethiopia, 62.
120. Important caveat: many of the two countries’ food-security programmes and policies have
been recently modified and not yet impact-evaluated, and thus they are compared on the ba-
sis of their potential rather than their established effects.

ORCID
Ivica Petrikova http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9785-9855

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